The Mammoth Book of Kaiju Read online

  The Mammoth Book of Kaiju

  Edited by Sean Wallace

  Copyright © 2016 Sean Wallace.

  Cover Illustration by The Red Dress (Debut Art).

  Ebook design by Neil Clarke.

  ISBN: 978-1-60701-484-3 (ebook)

  ISBN: 978-1-60701-476-8 (trade paperback)

  PRIME BOOKS

  Germantown, MD

  www.prime-books.com

  First published in Great Britain in 2016 by Robinson.

  Robinson is an imprint of Little, Brown Book Group

  Carmelite House 50 Victoria Embankment London EC4Y 0DZ

  An Hachette UK Company

  No portion of this book may be reproduced by any means, mechanical, electronic, or otherwise, without first obtaining the permission of the copyright holder.

  For more information, contact Prime Books at [email protected].

  All stories are copyrighted to their respective authors, and used here with their permission.

  “Introduction: On the Shoulders of Giants” © 2015 Robert Hood. Original to this volume. | “Occupied” © 2014 Natania Barron. First published: Kaiju Rising: Age of Monsters. | “Titanic!” © 2013 Lavie Tidhar. First published: Apex. | “Now I Am Nothing” © 2014 Simon Bestwick. First published: World War Cthulhu. | “The Lighthouse Keeper of Kurohaka Island” © 2014 Kane Gilmour. First published: Kaiju Rising: Age of Monsters. | “Breaking the Ice” © 2007 Maxine McArthur. First published: Daikaiju! 2: Revenge of the Giant Monsters. | “Mamu, or Reptillon vs Echidonah” © 2007 Nick Stathopoulos. First published: Daikaiju! 3: Giant Monsters Against the World. | “Kadimakara and Curlew” © 2007 Jason Nahrung. First published: Daikaiju! 2: Revenge of the Giant Monsters. | “Postcards from Monster Island” © 2015 Emily Devenport. First published: Clarkesworld. | “One Night on Tidal Rig #13” © 2007 Tessa Kum. First published: Daikaiju! 3: Giant Monsters Against the World. | “Show Night” © 2009 Steve Rasnic Tem. First published: Dark Discoveries. | “Love and Death in the Time of Monsters” © 2007 by Frank Wu. First published: Abyss & Apex. | “Seven Dates That Were Ruined by Giant Monsters” © 2005 Adam Ford. First published: Daikaiju! Giant Monster Stories. | “The Eyes of Erebus” © 2007 Chris McMahon. First published: Daikaiju! 2: Revenge of the Giant Monsters.“Running” © 2005 Martin Livings. | First published: Daikaiju! Giant Monster Stories. | “With Bright Shining Faces” © 2014 Jeanne Cook. First published: Kaiju Rising: Age of Monsters. “Kaiju” © 2014 Gary McMahon. First published: Fearful Symmetries. “Whatever Became of Randy” © 2008 James A. Moore. First published: Monstrous: 20 Tales of Giant Creature Terror. | “Attack of the Fifty-Foot Cosmonaut” © 2007 Michael Canfield. First published: Daikaiju! 2: Revenge of the Giant Monsters. | “Kungmin Horangi: The People’s Tiger” © 2005 Cody Goodfellow. First published: Daikaiju! Giant Monster Stories. | “The Island of Doctor Otaku” © 2009 Cody Goodfellow. First published: Monstrous: 20 Tales of Giant Creature Terror. | “The Behemoth” © 2014 Jonathan Wood. First published: Kaiju Rising: Age of Monsters. Reprinted by permission of the author. | “The Kansas Jayhawk vs. The Midwest Monster Squad” © 2005 Jeremiah Tolbert. First published: Interzone.“The Black Orophant” © 2007 Daniel Braum. First published: Darker Matter. | “The Unlawful Priest of Todesfall” © 2005 Penelope Love. First published: Daikaiju! Giant Monster Stories. | “Cephalogon” © 2007 Alys Sterling. First published: Daikaiju! 3: Giant Monsters Against the World. | “Frozen Voice” © 2011 An Owomoyela. First published: Clarkesworld. | “Softly Spoke the Gabbleduck” © 2008 Neal Asher. First published: Asimov’s.

  Contents

  “Introduction: On the Shoulders of Giants” by Robert Hood

  “Occupied” by Natania Barron

  “Titanic!” by Lavie Tidhar

  “Now I Am Nothing” by Simon Bestwick

  “The Lighthouse Keeper of Kurohaka Island” by Kane Gilmour

  “Breaking the Ice” by Maxine McArthur

  “Mamu, or Reptillon vs. Echidonah” by Nick Stathopoulos

  “Kadimakara and Curlew” by Jason Nahrung

  “Postcards from Monster Island” by Emily Devenport

  “One Night on Tidal Rig #13” by Tessa Kum

  “Show Night” by Steve Rasnic Tem

  “Love and Death in the Time of Monsters” by Frank Wu

  “Seven Dates That Were Ruined by Giant Monsters” by Adam Ford

  “The Eyes of Erebus” by Chris McMahon

  “Running” by Martin Livings

  “With Bright Shining Faces” by J.C. Koch

  “Kaiju” by Gary McMahon

  “Whatever Became of Randy” by James A. Moore

  “Attack of the Fifty-Foot Cosmonaut” by Michael Canfield

  “Kungmin Horangi: The People’s Tiger” by Cody Goodfellow

  “The Island of Doctor Otaku” by Cody Goodfellow

  “The Behemoth” by Jonathan Wood

  “The Kansas Jayhawk vs. The Midwest Monster Squad” by Jeremiah Tolbert

  “The Black Orophant” by Daniel Braum

  “The Unlawful Priest of Todesfall” by Penelope Love

  “Cephalogon” by Alys Sterling

  “Frozen Voice” by An Owomoyela

  “Softly Spoke the Gabbleduck” by Neal Asher

  About the Authors

  Introduction: On the Shoulders of Giants

  There is something cathartic about watching giant monsters trash cities. The films that feature them are like disaster movies—visual and endlessly entertaining spectacles of uncontrollable annihilation—but with the fantastical image of a living creature at their core. At their best these cinematic tales of monstrous beings represent a profundity that is hard to articulate. Perhaps it’s the morbid pleasure of seeing humanity’s greatest achievements crushed underfoot and humanity itself humbled—and yet somehow, despite this imposition of out-of-control relativity, surviving.

  And the purest form of this impossible fantasy of destruction is the kaiju.

  Kaiju is a Japanese term that has been little known in the West except among aficionados of a particular tradition of monster cinema—up until recent times, that is.

  The word means “monster” or “giant monster” (though more accurately it translates as “strange creature”) and the cinematic tradition such monsters spawned is called kaiju eiga (“monster film”). As the term kaiju can refer to any monstrous creature, the more specific term daikaiju (“giant monster”) is sometimes used to refer to the giant monsters of the film tradition. Either way, what we’re talking about here is really, really big monsters—impossible monsters compared to which we humans are little more than insects.

  Kaiju eiga as a film genre began with the creation of the now iconic giant monster Godzilla, known in Japan as Gojira, and in re-packaged form in the US as Godzilla, King of the Monsters. Gojira was made by Toho Studios in 1954 and directed by Ishirô Honda—a respected film-maker who was a close friend of the great Akira Kurosawa, often acting as the latter’s second-unit or assistant director on movies such as Stray Dog, Kagemusha, and Ran. Gojira was, for the time, an expensive film, and deservedly well thought of, though some later Godzilla films—weak in themselves but made worse through poor dubbing and cuts applied to overseas releases—tended to brand the entire genre as cheap and ludicrous in the eyes of many. The original Gojira itself was a relatively serious attempt on the part of director Honda to create a metaphor evoking issues raised by the nuclear attacks that annihilated Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of World War II, and more widely to encompass the moral implications of “super-science” in the post-war world. Such thematic “discussion” was anathema under Occupation rule, but nobody takes any notice of absurd monster movies, do they?

  Audiences in Japan
did, in a big way, and Godzilla’s iconic status developed through following decades with twenty-eight Japanese feature films (plus their Americanized counterparts) being produced, all starring the monster and assorted gigantic friends and enemies. There have been two official US Godzilla films since then, with a sequel to the 2014 Godzilla scheduled for release in 2018. Recently, Toho announced a planned new Godzilla film of their own, thus re-igniting the Japanese franchise that had gone into abeyance after 2004’s Godzilla: Final Wars. As a character, Godzilla has also appeared in various comic series (from Marvel, Dark Horse, IDW, and others), two animated TV series, various novelizations and advertisements, and on innumerable T-shirts. Everyone knows who the Big G is, even if they’ve never seen any of the films nor read the comics.

  But that’s not the end of it. Godzilla was the catalyst for an entire genre of tokusatsu (live-action, special-effect driven entertainments), a genre that includes the giant-sized humanoid alien superhero Ultraman and his progeny, fighting an endless array of bizarre kaiju. Ultraman was originally created in 1966 for a TV series of that name produced by Gojira special-effects guru, Eiji Tsuburaya. The franchise has been ongoing ever since, almost without interruption, both on TV and in the cinema. Godzilla alumni Rodan (an oversized pterodactyl-like creature) and Mothra (a battleship-sized moth) also received their own spin-off movies, as Toho went on to make a horde of non-Gojira kaiju eiga. A goodly number of them were directed by Ishirô Honda himself. Other studios joined in the party and started making their own kaiju eiga, the most successful being Daiei Studios’ giant fire-breathing turtle, Gamera, who has been flying around on and off since his debut in 1965.

  Strictly speaking then, the term kaiju refers to monsters in this particular Japanese tradition. The tradition itself, beyond Godzilla, is characterized by a high level of absurdity, and not all of the kaiju concerned are even vaguely reptilian. The monsters are much bigger than is physically viable; taken literally, these strange creatures are indeed impossible fantasies, despite the frequent science-fiction trappings given them. They come in all shapes and sizes; latter-day Ultraman series have been particularly inventive in this regard, as evidenced by, for example, Gan Q from the Ultraman Gaia series of the late 1990s—a gargantuan eye with two legs, arms ending in spikes and smaller eyes scattered over its clay-like body. Weirdness is par for the course.

  Kaiju origins are as diverse as imagination allows, from traditional nuclear mutation, through outer space and inter-dimensional invasion, to the incarnation of emotional and metaphysical states via the imagination of unsuspecting humans, often children. They all have names. Their favorite pastime is rampaging through cities and trashing buildings, though they’re not averse to appearing at sea, on tropical islands, in space, or . . . well, anywhere really. They tend to be all but impervious to humanity’s conventional military might (even nuclear) and as a result often come with science-based human nemeses in the form of anti-monster squads and huge robotic fighting machines. Whatever the imagination can come up with is likely to be utilized at some point, whether or not it makes scientific, physical or economic sense.

  Interestingly enough, a detailed history of the development of Godzilla and kaiju eiga reveals an older ancestry for cinematic giant monsters that points outside Japan to earlier Western influences. Gojira itself was inspired by the US monster film The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (US-1953; director Eugène Lourié), for which stop-motion expert Ray Harryhausen created a large, prehistoric beast known as a Rhedosaur, awakened by nuclear testing in the Arctic regions and now bent on destroying New York City. Toho executives had seen that film and, inspired by its success, wanted to make a Japanese version of it. They gave the job to Honda, little expecting he would produce something not only recognizably his own but also arguably more influential in the long run.

  Of course, the non-kaiju rampaging giant monster tradition in cinema goes back even further than The Beast—and giant monsters in literature further still. The 1925 movie The Lost World was based on an original novel by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and directed by Harry O. Hoyt, with monster FX by Willis O’Brien, the “father” of stop-motion effects. It offered up the first giant monster city rampage on film, when a brontosaurus brought back from the regressive lost plateau escapes from captivity and goes on a brief but effective rampage through the streets of London.

  Some years later O’Brien would create a giant monster perhaps even more iconic than Godzilla, even if this King starred in fewer movies: King Kong (directed by Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack in 1933). This giant ape beauty-and-the-beast classic also had its own relationship to the kaiju eiga tradition. Initially Toho had planned on creating Gojira via stop-motion, just like Kong, but lack of available expertise and the time-consuming nature of stop-motion led him to utilize man-in-a-suit techniques and miniature sets instead. This, too, became a key component of classic kaiju eiga, until recent times when CGI radically changed the landscape.

  Post-The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms and Godzilla: King of the Monsters, Hollywood would spend a decade or so creating a plethora of giant monsters (mostly reptilian or insectoid) that are awakened or mutated by the Bomb, though few of them display the thematic seriousness of Honda’s Gojira. Non-Japanese giant monster films since then have rarely drawn on the full range of absurdity or reveled in the sheer delight of imaginative abandonment that true kaiju eiga offers. But the giant monsters have kept coming nevertheless, often totally outlandish in their own right.

  There have been bipedal reptilian Godzilla-clones, of course, such as the titular monster of Gorgo (UK-1961), also directed by Eugène Lourié. Giant snakes have been common. Mega-sharks (and related mutant sea-life) have gained quite a fan-base, and giant spiders proved very popular (in particular, I recommend the recent Big Ass Spider, directed by Mike Mendez in 2013). Giant insects remain de rigueur, classically epitomized in Them! (US-1954; director Gordon Douglas), but more recently with Infestation (US-2009; director Kyle Rankin). Hybrid monsters, such as the self-explanatory Sharktopus (US-2010; director Declan O’Brien) or the equally ridiculous but rather cool Piranhaconda (US-2012; director Jim Wynorski) have given a B-film nod to the ludicrous side of kaiju design. There are even movies that offer hybrid monsters fighting other hybrid monsters (Sharktopus vs. Pteracuda (US-2014; director Kevin O’Neill). Cloverfield (US-2008; director Matt Reeves) made a decent attempt to give metaphorical resonance to an alien giant monster attacking New York City post-9/11, just as Godzilla had encapsulated the destruction of Hiroshima in 1945. Significantly, in 2013 writer-director Guillermo del Toro created Pacific Rim, his epic vision of a war in which a desperate humanity struggles to survive incessant attacks by giant creatures (referred to in the film as “Kaiju”). These kaiju arrive through a dimensional portal in the depths of the Pacific Ocean, and humanity fights them using giant mecha called Jaegers—huge robotic machines controlled by human pilots. This film more than anything else has made the word kaiju currency outside the more confined geek community. A sequel has been mooted.

  As the preceding seems to indicate, the kaiju tradition has all along been driven by cinema rather than existing within a pre-existing literary genre. However, while that’s essentially true in its purest form, giant monsters have made their fair share of appearances in other types of storytelling over the centuries. Tales featuring giant monsters go as far back as the Mesopotamian Epic of Gilgamesh (circa 2100 BC). Nordic myths in particular are full of giant creatures, such as Jörmungandr (the Midgard Serpent), Níðhöggr (a huge dragon), Fenrir (a mighty wolf ), Ymir (the Frost Giant), or the Kraken, a gigantic octopus with a penchant for disguising itself as an island and destroying ships. Though perhaps less monster-centric than this, Greek mythology, too, has its fair share of giant monsters, including the multi-headed Hydra and Cetus, a gargantuan sea monster, but also the humanoid pre-Olympian Titans. Most mythological giants end up fighting heroes and gods, of course—and generally harken back to earlier less-civilized times. They represent primal f
orces, which have been, if temporarily, driven back. Even the Old Testament (Genesis 6:4) mentions that “There were giants in the earth in those days,” a statement often associated with the Nephilim—whom some interpret to be large cross-bred beings, half angel, half human, who will return at the end of days.

  Giant monsters, mythological and otherwise, have also had a prolific life in Golden Age comics, such as early non-superhero Atlas/Marvel lines Strange Tales and Tales to Astonish. In their heyday, Jack Kirby’s eminently recognizable covers dominated the market. Like the kaiju of Ultraman and his ilk, Kirby’s monsters were often weird, and had names such as Groot, Moomba, Fin Fang Foom, Gargantus, Grogg, and Spragg, the Living Hill. When superheroes took over the comicbook market, some of the giant monsters still remained, size being an excellent balance to the heroes’ superpowers. Japanese manga has likewise included giant things, especially robots, and has burgeoned in popularity in the West over the past few decades. Meanwhile, giant monsters have appeared on and off in many of the genre and comicbook-based movies that continue to dominate the box office, mostly in secondary roles (see, for example, Guillermo del Toro’s Hellboy from 2003 and Hellboy II: The Golden Army from 2008). Their presence has been facilitated by the evolution of digital animation, which allows convincing interaction to take place on screen between man and giant monster. Using modern CGI techniques, literally anything is possible, so why not giant monsters? Giant monster stories generally, in whatever cultural format, have thrived on spectacle, massive destruction and larger-than-life threats. Convincing effects have given them a new cinematic life, as impressively demonstrated by the 2014 remake of Godzilla.

  But what about literary fiction?

  In 2003 we were still in the early beginnings of the Age of the Geek, a time when pop-culture fans such as Peter Jackson, Joss Whedon, and Guillermo del Toro would increasingly push genre boundaries into the mainstream. This trend has become a flood of genre geekdom over the past decade or so, thanks to super-popular TV shows such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The X-Files, Battlestar Galactica, Smallville, The Walking Dead, and Game of Thrones, not to forget genre-based blockbuster movies and in particular such fantasy franchises as those based on the Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter books. The superhero movie invasion that was facilitated by the success of Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight films and subsequently unleashed in full force by Marvel Studios, beginning with Jon Favreau’s Iron Man in 2008, is the latest incarnation of this geekification of the modern entertainment industry. These days nearly all the big box-office movies are genre-based. Comics and graphic novels are suddenly not only popular but also accepted as a valid artistic medium.